Bone Deep. Janice Johnson Kay

forgot. Sir.”

      Grant transferred his gaze to Dennis Porter. “I drove past the Starbucks at 11:18. There were then two patrol cars parked out in front. Your break had extended to forty-six minutes. We had only three officers patrolling this morning.” He let his voice rise. “Two of you were sitting on your asses sipping cappuccinos for damn near an hour this morning.”

      Erickson was stupid enough to say, “Sir, I wasn’t there that long. I was only—”

      Porter gave him a dirty look before turning his flushed face forward again.

      “At least dispatch knew where Porter was. You, now—” The cell phone at his waist vibrated. Grant looked down and saw a number that he’d programmed in, just in case.

      Shit.

      “I have to take this call,” he said. “Consider yourselves warned. Now get out of here.”

      They scuttled so fast, they had to wrestle briefly to decide who was getting out the door first. Grant swung away to look out the window at the parking lot.

      “Haller.”

      “Grant, this is Kat. Um, Kat Riley, from the nursery.”

      “I know who you are.”

      “I have more bones.” She sounded eerily calm, which meant she was scared to death.

      “Where this time?”

      “My desk drawer.” She paused. “It’s a whole hand this time. And…and I think it’s wearing Hugh’s wedding ring.”

      “Oh, damn,” he said, his eyes closing briefly. “Kat…you haven’t touched anything, have you?”

      “No.” There was a tremor in her voice now. “I can’t think of anything I less want to do than touch those.”

      “Okay. Stay where you are. Don’t tell anyone else. I’m on my way.”

      “Thank you,” she whispered.

      He didn’t run any of the red lights downtown, but it was a close call. He sure as hell wanted to. He kept picturing her sitting behind that desk in her dim little hole of an office, staring fixedly at the skeletal remains of her dead husband’s hand. God almighty.

      We still don’t know that these bones are Hugh Riley’s.

      The hell they didn’t, he thought. He’d reached a point where he’d be willing to bet a year’s pay that Kat’s husband was being returned to her piece by piece. Nothing else made sense.

      Was she being blackmailed? Was that what this was about? If someone had retrieved Hugh from wherever she’d stashed him—say, in a storage locker—this was a dandy way to scare her into paying up, and continuing to pay.

      Except, she clearly wasn’t. And that begged the question of why she was calling him every time a bone appeared.

      Thwarted by the last traffic light on the main street, he drummed his fingers on the steering wheel and stared, willing it to turn green. As if to piss him off, it stayed red for an eternity.

      When he finally got there, the parking lot in front of the nursery was almost empty. They were only an hour from closing, he realized, and rain clouds darkened the sky although they hadn’t opened up yet. It had been the wettest damned spring so far that he could remember since he moved to the Northwest. It was a good thing no one was around to notice his fourth visit in not much over a week.

      He entered the main nursery building, greeted the woman behind the counter—Joan Stover—and went directly to Kat’s office. When he knocked, she called, “Come in.”

      “You should have locked,” he said brusquely as he entered. “And asked who I was before you invited me in.”

      Kat wasn’t behind her desk. She stood in the corner, almost pressed against the wall, as if she’d been trying to get as far from her discovery as she could while staying in the office. Her face was skim milk pale. He’d noticed before that she didn’t tan well, even working outside year-round as she did. She was more likely to have a constantly peeling nose during the summer. Her pallor today, though, had more to do with her shock than it did with naturally pale skin.

      “I’m sorry,” Grant said more gently. “I shouldn’t yell at you.”

      “No, you shouldn’t. Nobody’s tried to attack me. It’s ridiculous to think—” She swallowed. Remembering, he suspected, the heavy door to the greenhouse bouncing on its hinges after she discovered the second bone.

      “You don’t think this is an attack?” He nodded to her desk.

      She shuddered and stayed where she was, her gaze on the desk rather than him.

      He circled it and saw the drawer half-open, as she must have left it. And, damn, all the bones in a hand laid out. Or, he amended, enough of the bones to make an effective tableau. A human hand had twenty-seven bones, some tiny, and he wouldn’t swear there were that many here. Grant leaned closer.

      “I’m going to get some pictures,” he said, opening the case of the camera he’d carried in. “We can try for fingerprints on the drawer handle—”

      “Why bother?” Kat said dully. “Do you really think whoever did this is that dumb?”

      “Criminals can be remarkably stupid.” He began snapping pictures. “That’s why most of them get caught. Haven’t you read about bank robbers who use one of their own deposit slips to write the holdup note on?”